Berlin, Germany
Poland was a fun little excursion for a few days and I'd like to have stayed longer, but unfortunately I had a bit of a deadline to meet back in Berlin to get a visa.
I'm heading to India in a few weeks and having looked into it found that I need to apply for a visa to visit. Visas are funny things - often when they're required you just pay for them on arrival and it's quick and painless, but the Indian one seems to be an exception involving going to the nearest embassy, filling in loads of forms, a big fee and a five-seven day wait. So this was half of last Tuesday gone, with the other half down to sorting out some chores, and as I was passing, a look in Germany's version of Harrods which was every bit as grand and expensive as you'd expect.
Holocaust Memorial
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It was back to normal on the Wednesday, starting with a wander to the Bauhaus museum. The Bauhaus movement was something I studied at Uni years ago so was interesting to see it first hand - a German design school from the 1920's which was very influential in modernising the look of products and buildings. After this, a walk through the Holocaust memorial, and across town to look around a museum called the Topographie des Terrors - a small building in a huge clearing, where once stood the headquarters and offices of the Nazi regime. It felt pretty odd stood outside, looking at this patch of land and trying to comprehend that so much evil and destruction came about because of what happened on that piece of land; the exhibition explained it all pretty well.
After the nice heat of Poland last week, Berlin is pretty chilly, and with the clocks gone back an hour the days are over too quickly. After grabbing a few layers, I spent Thursday mostly wandering round taking in a few areas of Berlin, seeing a huge former art squat, watching a fantastic street drummer, the Alexanderplatz, friedrichshain and neukollner areas, and finishing at the Stasi museum. The Stasi were in charge of state security in former East Germany, back when the country was divided in two and the place I visited was their former headquarters; left laid out exactly as it was when the Berlin Wall fell. As I learnt, it was a very perculiar country to live in back then, and not all that pleasant.
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With a few days to go until my visa was ready, I decided to escape south to Dresden - a city a hundred odd miles south, and rather than the bus or train wanted to try and use a liftsharing website called blablacar. After contacting a few people over the day it wasn't looking hopeful, but just as I set off to try and find a bus, a guy text me back saying he had spare seats. An hour later I was sat beside a nineteen year old German law student in his Renault Megane, cruising down the Autobahn, which as you probably know has in most areas no speed limits at all. He was a very knowledgable guy, and we had a proper a proper good chat about all things German. Sadly I realised that after nearly a month in the country, he's the first German I've had the opportunity to have a really decent conversation with - better late than never I suppose. But with the needle glued on 170 km/h, or about 105 mph pretty much the whole way, it wasn't the longest chat I've ever had!
Bauhaus museum
Topographie des Terrors
Art squat
Street drummer
Stasi museum
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